


finery becomes us

by pantalaimon



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Apocalypse, Earrings, Established Relationship, M/M, Sort Of, i wrote this before the s5 trailer i swear, safehouse, season four spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-25
Updated: 2020-03-25
Packaged: 2021-03-01 01:48:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,461
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23307073
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pantalaimon/pseuds/pantalaimon
Summary: Elias wants Jon to get an avatar earring, and Jon says no. Until he can't anymore.
Relationships: Martin Blackwood/Jonathan Sims
Comments: 12
Kudos: 238





	finery becomes us

**Author's Note:**

> I saw this [THIS](https://chickpeamcb.tumblr.com/post/613257058850111488/well-since-you-asked-so-nicely) comic on tumblr and I IMMEDIATELY had to write about it, as both an earring enthusiast and Jonathan Sims enthusiast.

Jon was the only one in the Archives that didn’t have his ears pierced. Or, well, they weren’t pierced anymore. Martin had seen the little indentations one time and asked about it, but Jon had just waved the question away, saying he had gotten them pierced in university, but after years of not wearing anything, the holes had closed. Of course, this put an image of a young Jon with earrings in Martin’s mind, and wasn’t _that_ a distracting thought. 

But the subject never came up again. At least, until Elias started offhandedly mentioning the prospect of Jon re-piercing his ears. Elias had always worn one simple dangle earring of an eye as far back as Martin could remember, but of course with everything else going on, he hadn’t realized what it meant until later. As soon as Jon started to figure out what he was becoming, how similar he would be to other avatars of different entities, Elias started encouraging Jon to get his own earring, just like him, or like Daisy, who had a single shark tooth earring hanging from one side. 

Jon always said no, of course, and although they never talked about it directly, Martin was secretly proud that Jon never gave in. It was a small sign that Jon was holding back against becoming whatever Elias already was. Martin even went so far as to leave his own stud earrings out for a few days, a tiny solidarity with Jon during all the chaos happening at the Institute. That is, until Jon commented on it a few days later. Martin was at his desk, absentmindedly rubbing an empty earlobe when Jon, walking by, had stopped. Martin looked up to see Jon staring at him.

“Where’s… don’t you usually have earrings in?” Jon asked.

Martin froze. He had meant for Jon to notice the lack of earrings, of course he did, but now in the moment, he couldn’t think of what he meant to say by it. 

“Oh, uh… yeah, I usually- well I do but I… I took them… out,” Martin winced. That was barely even a sentence, let alone an explanation. Jon’s eyes, which had been fixed on the ear Martin had been touching, now found Martin’s eyes. 

“Oh. I see. Well. I always thought they looked rather nice.” Jon seemed to pause after that, and after a stunned second he quickly turned away. “Sorry. If you’ll excuse me, I have to... um...”

Martin watched him go, mouth open slightly. Needless to say, the earrings were back the next day, and he thought he caught Jon flicking his eyes toward them anytime they were in the same room. 

But then, of course, the Unknowing happened, and nothing was really the same after that. Sitting by Jon’s bedside in the hospital, Martin worked up the nerve to reach out and touch him. Just once. Maybe just to convince himself that Jon was real, was still breathing, was still _alive_. His hand shaking slightly, he reached out and gently brushed his fingers through Jon’s hair, down the side of his face, and frowned when his fingertips brushed over Jon’s ear. The area felt warm, and when he pulled his hand back, he could have sworn the lobe looked slightly redder than normal, the skin of an ear that had just been pierced.

Martin’s stomach dropped, and he tried to convince himself that the redness was normal. Jon had been in a building that _exploded_ for Christ’s sake, there were still areas of his skin that were slightly singed. But as the hospital door clicked closed when he left, he couldn’t shake the image of Nikola adding a piercing gun to her array of tortures. 

After Jon finally woke up, Martin kept a close eye on him, albeit from afar. According to Peter, he was supposed to avoid contact with everyone, especially Jon. And for the most part, Martin did as he asked. It was hard at first, to turn away from these people he had spent years with, to actively avoid the man he loved. But it got easier over time, a fact that at first scared him, and then failed to make him feel anything.

But he found himself reflexively, almost obsessively, darting his eyes towards Jon’s earlobe, the right one, whenever he saw him in the hallways or in the office. Though the skin still seemed a bit pink, there was never an earring there, just the same small indentation as before. And every time, Martin would sigh in relief, just before he faded himself into the wallpaper so Jon wouldn’t notice him looking.

Elias was out of the picture for now, but Martin started to notice the earrings elsewhere. Melanie had one, a tiny knife glinting in the light, seeming almost red depending on how you looked at it. He didn’t dare ask her about it, though. Half the time she looked like she could kill him, and the other half, well, the other half was about the same. Peter had one, not a dangle earring like the others he had seen, but a small stud in the shape of a cloud, and Martin noticed that he had two of them, identical on either side. 

Of course, Peter enthusiastically avoided every question Martin threw at him, no matter the subject, so he eventually stopped asking. And when Simon Fairchild showed up to answer Martin’s questions, sure enough, he had a small stylized star swinging from one ear. Bombarded with all the other information he received, Martin almost forgot to ask about the earrings.

“Well then. If you have any last questions, I should be on my way right about now-” Simon stood up and reached for his cane.

“Wait!” Martin blurted out. “I mean- those earrings. Everyone has them. Well, not everyone everyone, but you know what I mean.”

Simon’s eyes seemed to sparkle. “Yes? A jewelry connoisseur, are we?”

Martin sighed in annoyance. “No, it’s just- what do they mean? Why do the avatars have them?”

Simon walked past Martin on the way to the door, clapping a hand down on his shoulder. “Well, you know what they say.” His eyes continued to sparkle, and Martin felt a strange sense of vertigo as he looked into them. “ _Finery becomes us_.”

........................................

Martin thought about that last sentence often in the weeks after that. He didn’t like that word “become”. Everything felt as if it was changing, and not for the better. Jon was _becoming_ less human, the Extinction was _becoming_ a threat, and he himself was _becoming_ more and more numb as time progressed. He did notice something odd about Daisy, though, after Jon brought her out of the Buried and Martin had had to disappear himself for a week to recover from the stress of willing Jon out of that coffin.

Daisy seemed different, less on edge, and more uncertain of her own presence. And once, when she turned, Martin got a glance at her ear, the one that had once held the shark’s tooth earring. It was red, irritated, and looked scabbed over, as if the earring had been forcibly ripped out. 

Martin shivered when he saw this, and found himself checking Jon’s ears even more fervently than before. Even after he thought everything was over, after he chose not to kill Jonah in the Panopticon, after Jon held his face in the Lonely and he felt all the love pour back into his numb heart, even after they were both tucked away in Daisy’s safehouse, he still checked. The action barely even registered in his mind anymore. Just a quick dart of the eyes towards Jon’s right ear, and the sight of the empty indentation would ease just a bit of tension out of his shoulders.

One afternoon, a week or two after they had first arrived at the safehouse, the two of them were huddled together in front of the fire, Jon practically on top of Martin as they lay on the couch. Martin was running his hand through Jon’s hair and down the side of his face, exactly as he had done in the hospital so long ago, and his fingers felt the small indentation in Jon’s earlobe. He felt a small snort of laughter from Jon’s face on his chest. 

“Martin, are you… rubbing my ear?”

Martin opened his eyes. “Hmm? Oh,” he laughed softly. “I suppose I am. I can stop if you like.”

Jon hummed slightly. “No it- it feels nice.”

There was a pause before Martin spoke again. “Jon, I’m glad you never got yourself one of those earrings.”

Jon was silent for a few seconds. “Well, like I told you before, I let them close on purpose. I looked like a right idiot in university, Georgie had no qualms about telling me that.” He laughed again, Martin smiled, and they stayed in that contented position for another few minutes before Jon shifted his weight on top of Martin, stretching his legs out.

“Martin, I’m a bit… hungry.” His voice changed slightly when he said _hungry_ , and Martin immediately knew what he meant. He kissed the top of Jon’s head and sat them both up on the couch, getting a good stretch in as well. 

“Right, well, Basira sent that folder of statements over, there’s sure to be something you’re hungry for in there, and I think I’ll go on a walk, if you’d like to be alone.” Martin got up and fetched a jacket from the closet, coming back into the living room to see Jon sorting through the folder. “I’m off, then.”

Jon looked up. “Let me know if you see any good cows.”

Martin felt a tidal wave of love rush through him, and he had to keep his smile from splitting his face in half. “Well of _course_ I’ll tell you if I see any good cows.”

........................................

The wind was brisk outside, and Martin was glad he brought his coat. He shivered slightly and altered his route to take him through the sunny patches of the field surrounding the house. Farther off, there was indeed a fenced off cow pasture, and Martin smiled to himself before heading in that direction. As he got closer to the fence, he pulled his phone out, intending to take some pictures of the highland cows to show to Jon later. These cows were surprisingly photogenic, and he got a few great shots in before he felt the ground shake slightly underneath him.

At first, Martin thought this was another recurrence of the Lonely panic, as he had come to think of it. He felt the same numb tingling in his fingers, the blurring of his vision at the edges, the lightness in his body, as if he was one stiff breeze from blowing away. He grabbed onto the fencepost blindly, mind racing with fear. Every other time, he had had Jon close to him, to hold him tightly until he felt real again. But this time he was alone, the most dangerous thing he could be.

But to his surprise, the shaking wave of panic never came. Instead, the ground continued to tremble, and the sun that had just been shining a few minutes ago disappeared in mere seconds. The clouds roiled, and the air seethed with the smell of ozone and blood. Something seemed to be behind the sky, and everything was washed in a sickly green, like the deadly seconds before a tornado touches down. 

Despite the weakness in his knees, Martin sprinted home, blinking back tears from his eyes and fumbling with his phone as he ran. He dialed Jon’s number, the safehouse’s landline, but it just kept ringing, and he cursed himself for leaving Jon alone, after everything they had been through.

Martin saw, and then felt, a lightning strike in the distance, and the wind whipped around him as he stumbled up the steps to the house, calling Jon’s name in a blind panic. He crashed in through the door, eyes locking onto the darkened shadow of Jon’s body lying crumpled on the rug. A sob escaped him as he knelt down on the floor beside him, grasping Jon’s shoulders to roll his body toward him.

Then, as Jon’s head lolled into Martin’s lap, he saw something that made his blood freeze in his veins. There, glinting in the sickly green light, as if it was winking, was a single gold earring dangling from Jon’s right earlobe.

Martin’s hand shook as he reached out to touch it, hoping against hope that somehow it wasn’t real. It was a simple stylized eye, connected by a fine thread of metal to a tiny crown in the center of the earlobe, and it was unforgivingly cold to the touch. Martin sat there, stunned, for a few seconds, before letting out a soft “ _no_ ”.

His fingers trembled, but he reached his left hand behind Jon’s ear to try and take the back off of the earring, to get it off of him and throw it out the window. 

There was no back to the earring.

Behind Jon’s ear was just smooth skin, barely even an indentation from where the other hole had closed. The eye winked at Martin again, and Simon’s voice echoed through his mind. “... _finery becomes us_ …”

Jon stirred in his arms, and Martin almost sobbed again. “Jon! Jon, wake up, love, _please!"_

“What’s… what happened… Martin?” Jon blearily looked up at Martin’s face, then around at where he was lying on the floor. He sat up more and paled when he saw the loose sheets of the statement scattered and crumpled underneath him. “Martin. What did I do? What ha-” He broke off when he looked up to see Martin wordlessly staring at the right side of his face.

Slowly, steadily, Jon raised a hand up to his ear, placing his fingers gingerly on the cold metal. When he pulled his hand away and looked at it in the green light, a smudge of blood stained his fingers. The light filtering in from the window shimmered, and began to shift to a deep churning red. 

Jon struggled to stand, and Martin helped him up, tears still blurring his eyes as he led Jon limping over to the window. Jon gently touched the earring again, but his eyes were locked on the clouds that looked like they were boiling, like they were dancing, like they were _watching_. 

Jon’s voice was small, barely audible over the howling wind and the sound of crashing in the distance. “Martin. What have I done, what have- look at the sky, Martin! It’s… it’s _looking back!"_

But Martin couldn’t look anywhere but at that earring, bloody and winking in the light of the end of the world.


End file.
